Respond each of the following questions excepting the one that you have already responded in the term test (in case there is no question that you have answered already, respond all the listed questions).
Each response should be of at least 200 words.
Each response is worth 5 points (out of a maximum grade of 30 points; those who have answered already one of the questions during the term test get 5 points automatically for that question; they do not need to answer it again in the mid-term exam).
For your responses you should take into consideration the following points:
• Please make sure to use correctly the key terms (these are the terms listed in the class handouts. You do not need to include the definition with your answer, unless specifically asked to do so.
• Please make sure that your references to the film are detailed and relevant. I will need to understand from your response that you have watched the film and that you have reflected on its meaning.
• Please cut and paste the topic question and include it in your exam, along with your responses.
• Please make sure to use the phenomenological terminology; make sure that your answers are expressed in a coherent, well-articulated and thoughtful manner.
• Please make sure to avoid any resemblance (in ideas or in form) between your answer and the term tests that your colleagues have posted already Sakai. Any plagiarized answer entails a grade of zero points for the whole Midterm test.
The answers are due on Sakai (in the Forum section under your own name, in the ME section) by 03/15, at the end of the day. I shall not consider any exam that has been posted after this date.
Please study carefully the definitions of plagiarism and cheating as included in the course syllabus. Cheating or plagiarizing on your final exam results in a zero grade (i.e. an F) for the Mid-Term exam.
1.
On Lesson 1 and on Albert Lamorisse, The Red Baloon
Refer to a scene in the film in which the behavior of the balloon suggests that the balloon has an intentional life. Describe the behavior of the balloon; the description should include a discussion of the intender, the intending and the intended object. Argue for the inseparability of these three elements within the intentional life of the balloon.
- On Lesson 2 and Wings of Desire
On p. 19 of IPh Sokolowski develops his previous analysis of the perception of a cube by substituting to the cube a public building. His point is that a public building (which can be considered a larger scale cube), has sides (a façade or a front, side walls, a back, a roof, a foundation), which people experience from a certain angle, that is under certain aspects. Sides and aspects are intersubjective presentations of a building, in the sense that they have a public character and everyone can agree on their appearance. And yet, each viewing of a side under a certain aspect is also a subjective experience, it happens as this act of viewing performed by this subject at this time. The way in which the building appears to me at this moment is called a profile. Profiles are subjective (private), rather than intersubjective (public) presentations of a object or a part of an object; their truth does not comport an intersubjective verification (agreement).
After watching the opening scenes of Wenders’s Wings of Desire (there are a couple of long shots of buildings first from the outside then from the inside) modify Sokolowski’s assessment of the experience of a building as follows. Refer to the interior of one of the buildings in the Wings of Desire; describe the sides and the aspects under which these sides are presented as they appear from within the building (imagine that you are the person filming the scene and take the stand point that the cameraperson takes when he or she films from inside the building). Describe the sides and the aspects that they take when viewed from the stand point of the camera. Include also a discussion of the subjective profile under which you would see this interior if you were the one filming it. For the discussion of the profile you would need to monitor the impression that the interior made on you, the subjective quality of your experience of being inside this building, of inhabiting it (in your imagination). - On Lesson 3 and Wings of Desire
Refer to the scene in which Damiel, who has recently become human, goes at the site where the circus used to be in search for Marion. The sight of the presence of the area which used to be the circus arena refers Damiel to the circus and to Marion (who are now absent). Considering that absence can be of many kinds, depending on who intends upon it, how one intends upon it and of the object which is absent, discuss the particularity of Marion (and the circus’) absence, in terms of the intending act/s, the intending subject, and the intended object. How is Marion’s absence perceived by (a) Damiel, (b) the film maker/camera man who presents Damiel’s search for Marion, and (c) the spectator (you, that is) who are watching the film-maker’s presentation of Damiel’s search?
4.
Lesson 4 and Wings of Desire
Explain briefly the meaning of the phenomenological notion of reduction. Consider Damiel’s love for Marion as a reversed reduction (a passage from the phenomenological attitude to the natural attitude; a naturalization, an un-reducing). Discus the way in which this reversed reduction works in the film (by what means is it presented; how does it manifest itself artistically). Offer an example of the way in which Wenders presents visually this reversed-reduction along the lines of an “intending” which is that of love-desire. Could this explain the title of the movie (Wings of Desire) and if so how?
5.
After he becomes human, Damiel visits a site in Berlin where a film-shooting takes place. There he caches a glimpse of the protagonist of the film, Peter Falk, whom he salutes and who greets him in return. The two carry a brief conversation across a wire fence. Considering that, in order to recognize Peter Falk, Damiel must have remembered his previous encounter with this person, and that such an encounter could have happened only at a time when Damiel was an angel while Peer Falk was human, the perception that must have presented Peter Falk to Damiel must have been the perception of an angel, while Damiel’s current act of remembering is necessarily a human remembering act (a so-called presentiation of Peter Falk as he was encountered previously [please note the distinction between presentation and presentiation]). Discuss this conundrum (an angel perception remembered as a human, by human remembering) at the noematic, noetic and subjective levels (the conundrum at the level of the perceived and remembered object; at the level of the acts of perceiving and remembering; at the level of the subject first as an angel than as a human). What does this threefold transition from perception to remembering say about the change in Damiel’s condition?
6.
Lesson 6 and Wings of Desire
Explain the following statement: “ Signitive intentions point away to the thing, pictorial intentions draw the thing near.” (Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, p. 82). Refer to the following scene in the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzFGEx9SkDg
Analyze first the signitive dimension of this section, i.e. that which Peter Falk says (identify the supporting perceptive layer of the signitive act, then identify the subject, the act, and the object of the properly speaking signitive intentionality). Afterwards, analyze the pictorial dimension of the same section (supporting perceptive layer; subject, act, object of the properly speaking pictorial intentionality). More precisely, as he is describing in words that which he is doing, Peter Falk is also doing it and his deeds are captured on film (in images). What he says counts as signitive; the film image of what he does counts as pictorial. After doing so, comment on the overall effect of the juxtaposition of the signitive and the pictorial dimensions in this section of the film, keeping in mind Sokolowski’s statement above (explain how the two kinds of intentionality complement one another).
Sample Solution